


on the subject of rocks

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Starshine Over Beach City: Moments from Steven Universe [42]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 04:17:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23372221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Steven and Jasper have a long overdue conversation, nearly two years afterFragments.It surprises them both.
Relationships: Jasper & Steven Universe
Series: Starshine Over Beach City: Moments from Steven Universe [42]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1523993
Comments: 31
Kudos: 261





	on the subject of rocks

Steven is eighteen years old when he decides he wants to try to speak with her again. **  
**

If she wants to, that is.

He thinks he’s ready. He thinks the conversation might dim the feeling of her fragments cutting into his palm, the weight of his crime crushing his heart, his gut, his gem. Therapy has helped a great deal. But there are still nights he wakes up panting, remembering what it felt like to _let go_ , to hurt, to _shatter_ , and he wonders. 

If Jasper has the same terrible memories, the same _haunting_ , then maybe they should talk about it.

He talks with Dr. Boverman for hours. He wants to be sure this is _right_. Not just for him, but he wants to make sure this won’t damage her further than he already has. They go round and round. They’ve spoken of so many things, old wounds that pierced and bled and fractured, but most of those wounds were done _to_ him.

The blood on his hands is less than he’d once feared it was, but it still doesn’t scrub clean.

“It will always be with you,” Dr. Boverman’s calm voice says. “You shattered Jasper. You didn’t intend to, but it’s what happened.”

“I know,” says Steven, and the thought no longer incapacitates him with shame. It was terrible, violent, the worst possible action committed at nearly his lowest point. But he accepts it, now, accepts that this will stay with him always. That it should.

And yet – 

He and Dr. Boverman strategize. Roleplay. Hours of scenarios, how to accept if she never wants to talk to him again, what to do if Jasper says she isn’t ready, what to do if she lashes out, what to do if she fights him, what to do if she bends her hands into the Diamond salute. Each scenario frightens him at first, sends his heart racing. The first time they talked about it he glowed pink again for the first time in months. But the terror fades a little every time they speak, and several weeks later, he thinks he might be ready.

***

Little Homeworld is always different and always the same. It’s a comforting flow of change, new Gems appearing each time he visits, old teachers moving on. His family is still there, of course, and he has plans to catch up with them tomorrow. But today – today he wants to know if this is the right time.

If there will ever be a right time. And if there isn’t, he thinks he can make his peace with that.

He finds Jasper sitting on a fallen log at the edge of the forest, alone as he’d expected she would be. A sketchbook sits in front of her, colored pencils at her side. His footsteps crunch on autumn leaves.

“Jasper?” he asks hesitantly, ten feet away. 

She turns to look at him, her form unchanged from the last time he saw her, the stripe through her eye disrupted, her horn broken. So she hadn’t gone to Yellow, then. A thread of fear mixed with guilt begins unspooling within him. Maybe he wasn’t ready after all.

Jasper snorts, a gruff smile spreading over her face. “I wondered if you’d stop by, one of these days. I heard some of the others say you were coming into town.”

“Hi,” says Steven hesitantly. He takes a deep breath, remembering his strategies. “I – I’d like to ask you something, Jasper.”

“Shoot,” she says in disinterest, picking up a pencil. She makes scratchy marks against the sketchbook paper, scribbles he can’t quite make out.

He edges closer. “I was wondering… I’ve done a lot of thinking.”

“Sounds like you.”

Despite himself, he chuckles slightly. “All right, fair.” 

“Thinking about what?” she asks.

“About you,” says Steven honestly. “And me. What I did to you. What we did to each other.” He lets out a long, tremulous sigh, returning mentally to his gemstone, taking deep breaths with his diamond as his anchor. “And I wanted to see if you wanted to talk about it. It’s okay if you don’t, or if you want me to leave you alone.” Breath. Another. “I’m so sorry, Jasper.”

She glances up at him, giving him an odd look, then gestures beside her with a powerful shoulder. “Go on. Sit down, already.”

No _‘my Diamond.’_ He’s more relieved than he’d expected to be. He sets down his bag and sits down on the ground, resting against the log instead of sitting on top of it with her. He sinks into the soft loam, leans against the fallen trunk. It’s more comfortable than it looks. A few feet between them seem like miles, or inches, he isn’t sure.

Jasper regards him coolly, tilting her head slightly to one side. “Why’d you really come here?”

“To talk to you,” says Steven, his hands folded and calm in his lap, his breathing slowing. “You told me once that I was the one who needed help. I’ve been getting it.”

“Told you,” she says, but there’s no gloating in her voice. She purses her lips, face tensed in concentration. At last she says, “So have I.”

He blinks, hands coming apart, fingers falling open. He raises his head and gazes up at her, wondering if he’s heard her right. “You have?”

“You told me to do something better with my life,” says Jasper, picking up her sketchbook. At this angle he can see what she’s drawn. It’s a rock – what was it with her and rocks – but a tenderly realized rock, craggy edges shaded in carefully, mosses and lichens rendered in textured shades of green and brown. 

“Jasper, that’s – that’s really beautiful,” says Steven. He’s been working on his art, too, but he’s no good at the type of delicate detail work laced into her sketch. “Who taught you?”

“Ruby,” she says. She sets the pencil down beside her, hands tensing on the sketchbook. “I don’t go to Lapis’ classes.”

“Right.” Part of him is saddened to hear it. Another part of him is grateful for Lapis’ sake. He wonders which of them he’s most like. “It seems like you’ve really taken to Little Homeschool. I’m glad for you.”

A small scoff of a laugh, but it softens at the end into something more like a real smile. Jasper shakes her hair, its white strands catching in the dappled sunlight beneath the trees. She looks… _calm,_ like this, and it’s not a state he ever remembers seeing her in before.

“What about you?” she asks suddenly.

“I’m doing well,” he replies, still shocked that they’re talking at all. It’s going far better than most of the scenarios he’d practiced with Dr. Boverman. “I visit with my family every couple of weeks. I’ve been spending a lot of time in cities lately. All the noise and hustle and bustle… it’s different, sometimes it’s overwhelming, but I like the energy. It’s… good. It’s really good. Connie and I meet up every week. And I talk to my therapist.”

“What’s that?”

“A therapist? Um… it’s like a healer for human minds. But it’s not instant, like with Diamond powers. It takes time. A long time.” He gives her a small smile. “Sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step back, but overall, I’m feeling a lot better than… before.”

Jasper considers his words. She leans down, and he realizes a shiny blue beetle is crawling over the tip of her boot. He tenses, waiting.

Jasper watches the beetle go, making no further move toward it. It ambles away peacefully.

“You are not my Diamond,” she says into the silence.

“No,” he agrees, and something inside of him unclenches. “I – I’m _a_ Diamond. But mostly I’m just Steven.”

“I hated you for so long.”

He fights an urge to be sarcastic, to bite back at her. This doesn’t sound… angry. He keeps quiet, and lets her speak.

Her hand clenches into a fist, heavy against her thigh. “I thought that if you could stop being weak, if I could make you stronger, I would have my Diamond again. My purpose. Someone to protect, someone to serve.” 

She stares into the woods, and he remembers his hands and legs awash in pink, the glow as he tore through the trees beneath a starry sky. He remembers jagged laughter, his gem humming, a power crueler than he’d ever felt before – 

“I know.”

“Don’t ‘I know’ me when I’m talking to you,” she snaps. “I’m trying to – arrgh. I thought this would be easier.”

“You thought what would be easier –” he starts to ask.

“You know. _Talking._ Ugh. It’s nothing like a good fight. The target keeps changing.” She crosses her arms, still staring off into the trees. The sun shifts overhead, casting her face in shadow.

“That’s called a conversation,” he says gently. “Battles are battles, but a hard conversation… it can hurt.”

“Now you tell me,” says Jasper, and it takes him a solid minute before he realizes it’s a joke. He laughs, but it’s too late, and Jasper shakes her head. “Look. _Steven_. I – I’m sorry.” The words are hasty and fumbled and fast, but he catches them, barely.

“ _You’re_ sorry?” Steven yelps. “But I’m the one who _shattered_ you.” It still comes out like a dirty word, almost two years later. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to fully say it, if he’ll ever be able to act like it hasn’t scarred him. He hopes not. “I’m the one who should be apologizing to you.”

“You have. Just now, and before,” she says, shrugging. “But I only said I’d teach you to get you to fight me. And you did. And I lost.”

“Because I lost _myself_ , I lost who I was, you didn’t make me –”

“But you were _off-color,_ ” growls Jasper. “You were – what do you humans call it again –?”

“Sick,” he says softly. Such a small word. It barely begins to cover everything that went wrong two years ago, but he knows CPTSD won’t mean a thing to her, and that’s okay, that’s not what he’s here for.

“ _Sick,_ ” she repeats. “And I –” She digs her hands into the tree bark, small flakes of it crumbling beneath her shaking hands. “I made you worse. So that I could get something I wanted. I failed to protect my Diamond from _myself_.”

“Jasper –” he gasps. “You’ve been blaming yourself? For _me_ shattering _you_?”

“Someone’s got to do it,” she huffs.

He rubs the back of his neck with his hand, tries to take another deep breath, reminds himself to return to the thought of his gem as a centering point. He can do this. He can do this. It’s just, this isn’t how he thought it would go at all. 

He closes his eyes. Remembers the way she screamed at him, punches in the gut, the face, the sides. Remembers the way she goaded, the way she pressed, how proud she looked of how frightening he’d become. He doesn’t know what to say. “I – I _was_ sick,” he manages finally. “I – you’re right.”

“Of course I am.”

He shakes his head at that. “But I’m still the one who did it. I still have to take responsibility for hurting you,” he demands.

Jasper gives him an appraising look. “Hmph,” she says, and he doesn’t know if it’s a hmph of agreement or a hmph of disdain. It’s hard to tell with Jasper. She holds the silence an uncomfortably long time before she says, “Maybe.”

“This isn’t how – I wanted you to be _mad_ at me,” Steven admits. “I wanted you to be pissed off! To tell me to get away from you!”

“I can still do that,” says Jasper, apparently turning the thought around in her mind. She chuckles, very slightly. “But if that’s an order, I’m ignoring it.”

He laughs. “You’re full of surprises, Jasper.”

“Am not.”

“You kind of are.”

“Don’t be so surprised then.” She picks up her pencil, returning to her sketch. Grass starts to grow beneath her rock, verdant blades springing up from dark soil.

“I thought you hated the local ecosystem.”

“It has its functions,” says Jasper begrudgingly. “If I leave the grass it provides better contrast for the rocks.” She picks up a different shade of green, adding highlights. “It’s still puny. But it has a purpose of its own.”

“What’s yours?” he asks, then kicks himself for getting so personal.

“Only if you tell me what _yours_ is.”

Two years ago, the request would have paralyzed him. Two years ago, he’d have panicked, spun out with a lie, tried his best not to think about who he was and what he was supposed to do.

He just smiles. Breathes in the fresh green air, so different from the machine-smell of the big city. Beneath the green there’s a hint of salt, the promise of the sea. It smells like home.

“My purpose is to be Steven,” he says simply. “To be myself. To grow and change. To love myself, regrets and all.”

“Sounds all right,” says Jasper begrudgingly. “Sort of like mine these days.” She turns to him, frowning. “You got something to write on?”

“Uh, let me see.” He rummages in his bag. “Oh hey! I have my sketchbook, too.”

“Well?” Jasper says, pointing to the boulder before her. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He flips through his sketchbook, passing pages of silly Connie faces, a self-portrait in pink and white, Lion poses, CPH classic fanart. He settles on a blank page and Jasper shoves a green pencil into his hand. He feels smooth wood, the lightness of the organic drawing implement rounded and gentle in his palm. No sharp edges, no jagged fragments, no terrible weight dragging his clenched hand into the hot water. He blinks back tears.

The sunlight shifts, the golden hour arriving, brilliant light shafting through the leaves above and lining the forest floor in spun-gold glory. His hands don’t quite have this kind of magic in them, but he tries his best, his drawing including sketches of the rock, the grass, the trees beyond them. He adds a gleaming line of yellow at the edges. He’ll show it to Dr. Boverman at their next appointment.

“Not bad,” says Jasper, peering over his sketchbook. “You added the trees.”

“It just felt more complete that way,” he says. He glances at her drawing. The rock is resplendent, resting on gold-touched grass, light captured in patches against the mosses and lichens. “You can see all of this? It’s incredible, Jasper.”

“It’s just what it looks like,” she says stubbornly. “It’s a good challenge.”

“Like a conversation,” he says, half to himself. 

“Something like that.” The breeze flutters past them, carrying faint birdsong, the far-off scent of the sea.

“Thanks for talking with me, Jasper. I know you didn’t have to.”  
  


“Of course. I do what I want,” she replies, and her voice is gentler than he’s ever heard it.

**Author's Note:**

> All the feelings for my son. Maybe someday I'll write about what led Jasper to this point, but for now I like the idea of Steven not knowing, either.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] on the subject of rocks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28536870) by [GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)




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